World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[TedNugent]

I think that's the problem, is finding a group of decent, serious minded and dedicated people that clear content so that everyone can go home rather than fucking around all night.

So many people want to pet battle, or level alts, or wander around looking at trees. Most people just like fucking around, and even among those that don't a lot of them are tools.

The game's end-game content meat and potatoes is not designed for those people. What bothers me is that instead of putting my nose to the grindstone and working through it, I first have to find other people who have jobs, kids, work in the morning, friends to go out with on Friday, etc. You end up logging in once a night to do an hour of dailies and farm your garbage loot at your garrison and then log off.

 

[Metro]

I'm sure I could find a decent group of people to do 5 man challenge modes with but I don't want to bother anymore. Especially when I wouldn't play for more than a month, maybe two. There's no point. 6-8 weeks after launch there's very little reason to continue playing. Even content patches don't add much since they didn't bother developing new five mans in WoD and probably won't bother in Legion. Raids... too much busy work/guild wrangling for me at this stage of my life.

 

[TedNugent]

No, you'd have an easier time finding a ten man group than finding a group to do 5 mans. I bronzed (by necessity) in most of the CM dungeons in WoD in order to get the 640 trash loot they dropped prior to Highmaul release and getting my own guildies to go was like pulling teeth. Half of them would flounder around like idiots. Had better success with most PuG groups, and that was a rotating roulette of stupidity. I can't imagine how anybody works up the wherewithal to do gold modes, but A) you have to know what the fuck you're doing, which means pull exploit routes, invis pots, etc.

I saw somebody with 7/8 gold begging "WTB gold Grimrail CM" on trade just the other day.

Not to say I didn't have fun with those but I shit you not I spent 30 minutes multiple nights in UBRS because we had healers that would stand in fire 15+ attempts in. Then my guildies got pissed at me for shaming them for not going into CMs with me for trashbag pre-raid gear. Highmaul was an absolute hell mess with the first guild I got into WoD with. GM promising me all this and that, and then he ended up railroading his own guildies and I left with some other chick to a new guild, blabla, some other shit happened, etc the end.

I actually PuG'd my Lich King kill back in 4.0. Prior GM had kicked me out of his guild after his group 2 killed Festergut for the first time with me in it and one of his PuGs facepulled the boss in the middle of a trash LoS pull. I said something like "don't fucking pull," woke up the next morning and I was out of the guild. Pugged LK kill (took about 8 hours straight on somebody else's lock), then unsubbed.
WoW raiding has always been a bad experience to me and left a sour taste in my mouth.

That said try this for CMs,

http://openraid.us/main/index

 

[Mangoose]

My guild was military guys along with some real life friends :fuckyeah:

We were the "Care Bears" on a PVP server lolol

And yes the founding group were named after the real Care Bears

 

[TedNugent]

Yeah, I met a military guy when playing WoW, he had a spinal injury from a shrapnel wound which is why he was playing WoW all the time, and he was always whining about his addiction to painkillers and the Veterans Administration.

:patriot:

 

[J1M]

Main change Legion needs is the ability to buy it with in-game gold.

 

[Mangoose]

Yeah, I met a military guy when playing WoW, he had a spinal injury from a shrapnel wound which is why he was playing WoW all the time, and he was always whining about his addiction to painkillers and the Veterans Administration.

:patriot:

Lol one of the guys was wounded and during his bedrest he made High Warlord.

 

[Israfael]

25 year old = kid to me.

Yet strangely you sound like an edgy kid somehow...

I can't imagine how anybody works up the wherewithal to do gold modes,

Well, i can't say for WoD CMs, since i havent done them yet (leaving it for last months of expac), MoP ones were heavily geared towards aoe pulls and burst aoe on those packs that tank collects, probably it's the same here. You couldnt get gold if you pulled like in TBC and cc'd stuff (apart from certain mobs in scholomance). The only 'exploit' i remember are the trash reset thing in scarlet halls (which are piss easy to finish in any case) and 'die and ress' thing (in case if not every group member has salyin war banner to reset aggro) in shado-pan monastery. It's pretty straightforward, you just need to shoehorn yourself into certain mindset.

 

[Minttunator]

Pugged LK kill (took about 8 hours straight on somebody else's lock), then unsubbed.
WoW raiding has always been a bad experience to me and left a sour taste in my mouth.

Pugging was an absolute pain in the arse in WotLK! I remember pugging ICC and 95% of groups always disbanded after Saurfang - the rest wiped a few times on Festergut/Rotface and disbanded then. And, of course, if you got saved to a raid and didn't clear it you were fudged for the week because you could only have one raid save. Currently this system is only used for mythic raids (where it makes sense) and the other difficulties work in a much more reasonable manner. I don't agree with all the changes that have been made to WoW in the past few years, but the current loot+raid lockout system is definitely a HUGE quality of life improvement - at least for a PUG raider like me.

 

[Israfael]

Lockouts made people value their raiding spots in the guilds, so this change killed the lower tier guilds, thus it wasn't good. Guilds are now worthless if you are below certain progression level, so organizing a new guild from scratch that can be competitive is nigh impossible

 

[Angthoron]

Pugged LK kill (took about 8 hours straight on somebody else's lock), then unsubbed.
WoW raiding has always been a bad experience to me and left a sour taste in my mouth.

Pugging was an absolute pain in the arse in WotLK! I remember pugging ICC and 95% of groups always disbanded after Saurfang - the rest wiped a few times on Festergut/Rotface and disbanded then. And, of course, if you got saved to a raid and didn't clear it you were fudged for the week because you could only have one raid save. Currently this system is only used for mythic raids (where it makes sense) and the other difficulties work in a much more reasonable manner. I don't agree with all the changes that have been made to WoW in the past few years, but the current loot+raid lockout system is definitely a HUGE quality of life improvement - at least for a PUG raider like me.

Coincidentally, this is what killed non-hardcore raid groups. You don't need to commit, you don't need to make social ties, you don't need to make any sort of effort, starting from basic encounter knowledge and ending with personal skill, meta knowledge and gear maintenance.

 

[Minttunator]

Yeah, that's a good point! I've almost always been a PUG raider so the effects of the lockout system changes on guilds didn't really affect me - I do feel bad for those that were negatively impacted, though.

 

[Zeriel]

They've shifted towards a model where the content is either piss easy or you absolutely have to join an organized guild/PvP group whatever and use Vent if you want to participate in challenging things. I suppose that's fine but I'm of an age where I'm not interested in doing so. That being the case all WoW is good for is about a month's play time per content patch. And paying $60 for an expansion is a worse deal than paying $60 for something like Fallout 4. Odds are you'll see more unique content in Fallout 4 than WoW where most of your hours are spent repeating the same dungeons.

Our guild (10/13M atm, dynamic roster of 25-26 raiders) is mostly of 25-30 yo players, not all of the relatively high end teams are made of screaming kids, sometimes its the collectives of the same minded, calm people as well. As in olden times, you simply have to search for one that suits your needs (or maybe the idea of classic mmo lost appeal to you)

The very topend guilds tend to skew younger however, because of the time investment required. Either you have a very strange work/life situation where you can play WoW 10 hours a day every day in that raiding scene, or you are young enough to have no responsibilities, i.e either in school or college and fucking up those two things to do well.

 

[Angthoron]

Yeah, that's a good point! I've almost always been a PUG raider so the effects of the lockout system changes on guilds didn't really affect me - I do feel bad for those that were negatively impacted, though.

I was leading a raid group from WotLK to WoD (starting with one of the subgroups and ending with the whole thing). In WotLK we had an endless supply of people wishing to join, with all sorts of backgrounds and schedules, and since we had 5 10-man groups running regular raids, and a 25-man once a week for those that didn't have enough and needed a quick carry, we could facilitate a lot. 2 groups ran casual, 1 ran hardcore, 2 ran something in-between. The group I ran would usually see between 14 and 21 sign-ups for each event, the rest had a norm of 11-15.

After LFR got introduced, we lost the "casual pugger, but fun guys, so we'll totally play with them!" demographic very quickly - they'd run LFR once, see the encounter and cancel the sub because they basically did everything there was to do, didn't feel like grinding it out with strangers, etc. Eventually we ended up with 3 groups running in Cata. 2 in MoP. 1 in WoD, and even that died a few months in because it was easier for everyone to just LFR or use the new grouping tool.

I guess it works if it works, but for me, MMOs weren't about hanging out in a lobby, so now that the old aspect of MMOs is gone, I'm essentially done with the game.

TL;DR: Meh.

 

[Israfael]

10 hours a day every day in that raiding scene

If you play 10 hours a day constantly on something like 5/7 schedule, your raid will burn out in a month. Only truly top guilds do that, and only in the first weeks of progression. As far as i know, they simply take paid or unpaid vacation for that time, then go back to normal schdule (they clean whole instance in 2 hours anyways after progression, so no need to burn themselves out). We raid 3.5hrx3 days, and that's probably the highest time commitment a semi-casual guild can ask from working / family people. In any case, if you dont care for the race (since that's whole another level of gameplay), you can easily clear at least some mythic bosses (we started in october) on a very leisurely schedule (even 2days - we got garrosh down on 10m hc with 4hr x 2 days a week).

 

[Israfael]

1 in WoD, and even that died a few months in because it was easier for everyone to just LFR or use the new grouping tool.

They still don't realise what they did by allowing flex in all raid difficulties except mythic and why suddenly 80% of the guilds collapsed on virtually all non-high pop servers. I guess they'll get Wildstar treatment in the Legion unless they do something

 

[Zeriel]

10 hours a day every day in that raiding scene

If you play 10 hours a day constantly on something like 5/7 schedule, your raid will burn out in a month. Only truly top guilds do that, and only in the first weeks of progression. As far as i know, they simply take paid or unpaid vacation for that time, then go back to normal schdule (they clean whole instance in 2 hours anyways after progression, so no need to burn themselves out). We raid 3.5hrx3 days, and that's probably the highest time commitment a semi-casual guild can ask from working / family people. In any case, if you dont care for the race (since that's whole another level of gameplay), you can easily clear at least some mythic bosses (we started in october) on a very leisurely schedule (even 2days - we got garrosh down on 10m hc with 4hr x 2 days a week).

No, on average they really do spend that amount of time on things related to the game. You're forgetting all the non-raid stuff guilds like that do to stay in top form--whether it's gearing other characters, theorycrafting, challenge runs, arena, etc. And when they go into farm status for a raid and only spend one night a week on it they just transition to other things--like PTRs of the next tier of raid content. By the time a top guild attempts a boss on live they've already done hundreds of attempts or kills on the PTR and have a plan already set. The difference between a guild that clears the entirety of mythic before the next tier and one that does it at a world ranking speed is almost bigger than the difference between PUG players and your average semi-hardcore raiders. Those people live in the game, pretty much. If they don't, they won't remain competitive.

Now it is true that guilds burn out, and when enough of the guild burns out at once to not allow recruits to refresh the roster that's when you see famous guilds lose rankings or implode entirely. Massive turn-over is an inherent quality of top-end raiding, it kind of reminds me of some high-stress jobs I've been in where no one expects to do it for more than a certain amount of time.

 

[Israfael]

No, on average they really do spend that amount of time on things related to the game

Well, i meant pure time spent entirely on raiding (aka being inside the instance), not the other things. Then yes, difference is staggering, but no one forces anyone to live that (non)life - what i meant it's not like all content is reduced to a binary choice between LFR with 10 stacks of noob buff and progression race, you can still raid at fairly high levels of gameplay without dumping whole life into it. Other things though, like leveling, pvping or dungeoning - are either irrelevant, trivialized or have the same barriers (as you say, time commitment + expertise that you can't really get without huge pain) as raiding

 

[Angthoron]

You really don't need 10 hours a day to stay current in WoW HC raiding for years now. Even in WotLK the only really time-consuming part could be getting consumables, and even that could be minimized to 1 hour per week.

 

[GarfunkeL]

You didn't even need 10 hours a day back at vanilla or tbc

 

[Metro]

25 year old = kid to me.

Yet strangely you sound like an edgy kid somehow...

No, this is what a disgruntled adult sounds like. When you're older, you'll sound the same.

Re: Vanilla, while a moderately progressed guild could spend maybe two nights of three hours or three nights of two hours raiding, the average raider probably had to put in fifteen to twenty hours a week. Not ten hours a day but still fairly time consuming for one hobby.

 

[abija]

It's not the amount of hours, many people waste more in a week, but the relatively strict schedule.

 

[Metro]

It's the same issue. If you work a 8/9 to 5/6 job then squeezing in those 20 hours per week isn't easy.

 

[Ninjerk]

Squeezing in this dick isn't easy

 

[Metro]

I told you it was lupus.